I hate to admit it, but there’s something about that word that puts me off. Maybe it’s because it sounds like vulgar or because in the years before my food awakening I had no idea what it was and just assumed that I’d hate it. It’s safer if you don’t try things, right?

Of course, that, as they say, is bull…

And in the case of bulger, that would be exceptional bull.

You may have had this cooked and cracked bit of wheat grain if you’ve had tabbouleh. Bulgur has played major role in Middle Eastern cuisine for centuries, and it is a bona fide ancient grain with 4000 year old ties to the Hittites, Hebrews and the Babylonians to boot.

Bulgur is wheat that gets a partial cooking before it’s dried and cracked. The grain has a nutty flavor and a substantial

Bulgur and Red Lentils

and chewy texture that’s a very satisfying by itself, in salads, and, as in our recipe today, in soup, too.

Bulgur comes packing a bunch of good things. A cup of cooked bulgur has about 150 calories, is loaded with 8 grams of fiber, 5 and a half grams of protein, almost 10% of an adult woman’s recommended iron intake (and ~22% of men’s), and a healthy dose of thiamin, niacin, folate and vitamin B-6. All that and it can taste good too.

Bulgur works well with lots of seasonings and matches well with various foods, but today we’re pairing it with its long time nutritional partner in crime, the amazing lentil. Those of us with certain Sunday School backgrounds may remember the infamous bowl of lentils that Jacob used to acquire Esau’s birthright – like bulgur, lentils have an ancient pedigree: the legume was cultivated along the banks of the Euphrates some 4 millennia ago and remain an important part of that region’s diet.

If you combine these two foods you have a whopping bunch of fiber, protein, and vitamins; if you combine them in our soup recipe, you’ll be less concerned about how healthy your food is than with how well you’re eating. Mahasti combines cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, and turmeric in this soup which echo the flavor of the history that these two ancient staples share. More importantly, the spice blend creates a fragrant aroma and deceptively rich taste. Both lentils and bulgur bring a lot of texture to the pot, so it’s a hearty mouthful of satisfaction that tastes as good as it smells.

If you were to scroll back through past posts of this blog, you’d find that we have a lot of fun with National food days. We celebrate them, we make fun of them, and sometimes we make fun of ourselves for celebrating them. And we’re still not sure of who even creates them. Even so, we plug along, dutifully checking our calendars to see whether or not it’s time to celebrate National Lima Bean Respect Day.

But a few of these holidays call to mind subjects that are richer or more important than the day itself. Today for example is National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day and, while we love peanut butter – and our pie proves it – it’s a good day to remember the life and work of George Washington Carver who, though he did not invent peanut butter, was the original Peanut Promoter Extraordinaire.

If you don’t know Carver’s story, we can’t think of a better time to learn more about it: it’s one of those stories that might never have been – just because of its very beginning.

Carver was born into slavery around 1864 in Diamond Grove, Missouri and, after his mother, Mary, disappeared, presumably kidnapped by slave traders who still roamed the South at that time. George, an infant at the time of Mary’s disappearance, was raised by Moses and Susan Carver – the same folks who had owned his mother before she vanished.

George was a sickly child and unfit for the kind of hard labor that many freed slaves endured after the war; so he stayed close to home learning domestic chores and tending the garden. He developed an interest in plants, and the Carvers provided him with some education – both of which would come to define much of Carver’s life.

He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1894 and in 1896 completed a graduate degree with intensive work in plant pathology. Carver established a reputation as a brilliant botanist which would lead him to work for Booker T. Washington at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute where he would head the agricultural department.

That’s such a simple paragraph to write, but the truth is a complex thing, made especially so by the always difficult, often fatal challenges that followed former slaves in the years after the War.

Among those challenges, there were some that were shared by impoverished Southerners of all stripes – including the

The Humble Peanut

creation of a sustainable lifestyle. Carver’s work and studies in crop rotation and alternative cash crops to cotton at Tuskegee substantially improved the lives of farmers and sharecroppers all over the South. But it’s his work with the humble peanut that really sticks in the mind – famously, Carver discovered over 300 uses for the crop which also acted as a rejuvenator for fields ravaged by nutrient depleting cotton.

Among Carver’s nutty discoveries – well, there was shoe polish, goiter treatment, and laundry soap, but there were over 100 food uses that included cookies, cake and pie crust, too. And there were savory recipes including peanut sausage and a peanut and cheese roast – we’ve included those recipes below, but you can read all of them at this Texas A&M site.

So what if somebody else invented peanut paste or as we know it now, peanut butter? George Washington Carver was one hell of a contributor to the American Dream, and his work improved the quality of countless lives – we barely do his memory justice here.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

Carver’s work made peanuts an indelible and enriching part of Southern life – I’d say that’s worth celebrating over a piece of our Peanut Butter pie anyway – how about you?

Happy Peanut Butter Lover’s Day!

42, PEANUT SAUSAGE

Grind 1/2 pound of roasted peanuts, 1/2 pound pecans, 1 ounce hickory nuts, and 1/2 pound walnut meats. Mix with six very ripe bananas; pack in a mould, and steam continuously for two hours; when done remove from lid of kettle or mould, and when mixture is cold turn out and serve the same as roast meat sliced thin for sandwiches, or with cold tomato sauce or other sauce.

43, PEANUT AND CHEESE ROAST

1 cup grated cheese

1 cup bread crumbs

1 teaspoon chopped onion

1 cup finely ground peanuts

1 tablespoon butter

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the onion in the butter and a little water until it is tender. Mix the other ingredients, and moisten with water, using the water in which the onion has been cooked. Pour into a shallow -baking dish, and brown in oven.

It’s also a word with an excellent genealogy. Its immediate roots are from the French language and a word for sauce pan, which seems reasonable enough, especially when you consider that we use the word for both the cooking vessel and the food within it.

But if you trace further you’ll find that the word relates to the Latin word for bowl, and the ancient Greek “kyathion” which is like a pet name for the “dipper for the wine bowl.” So, if you ponder it, the word casserole both begins and ends with sharing.

Casserole has a long tradition of spreading the wealth – for those of us who grew up in the rural South, a church social often meant long tables laden with oblong and deep serving vessels full of tuna bake, hamburger pie, scalloped potatoes with ham, and any number of dishes full of creamy chicken concoctions or green beans dressed with fried onions and cream of mushroom soup.

For me, those are the bright memories of an otherwise difficult relationship with the little fundamentalist church that dominated so many of my greener days. But for every recollection of that experience that troubles me, there’s also the image of my Mamaw Ethel and every other good cook who would fill the tables of a church supper with food. Mamaw and her cohorts always brought extra to those gatherings – even if their own pantries were thin, it was essential that the church supper was a feast. Never a matter of pride, they believed in having more than enough to share.

And if you were a visitor caught unawares by the feast, or perhaps a poorer member who couldn’t contribute much or anything to the table, then those sweet ladies would practically manhandle you to the front of line. For them, the only sin on that day was if anyone went away hungry, and the only message to preach was to share and share alike.

And sharing, as you may know, is a particularly potent form of magic: it has the power to create friends and banish loneliness; it warms the heart and comforts the sad; and for traditions and thinkers as diverse as Lao Tzu and St. Francis, sharing is the key to happiness as well as the root of goodness.

It may seem a little too much to expect from the humble casserole. Cynics may see only that casseroles are convenient, easy ways to feed a crowd. But as far as I can tell, if you’re even thinking about feeding a crowd, then you’re on the track.

Even so, casseroles don’t have to be open and dump a can conveniences or concoctions of dubious merit – and they shouldn’t be. As you can see below in Mahasti’s recipe, a well-considered casserole not only shares lots of food, it shares lots of flavor. In this case, the excellent taste of Chile Rellenos is deconstructed into layers that are simple to assemble without sacrificing the savory joy of the original dish.

Perhaps you’ll tune into WBIR tomorrow morning for Weekend Today – Mahasti will be live showing you how easy it is to make magic and share the love.

Tomato Head’s Chile Rellenos Casserole

3 Poblano Peppers

Rinse Peppers and place on a cookie sheet under the broiler. Turn peppers until charred on all side.

Remove the peppers from the oven, place in a covered container and allow to cool. When peppers are cool enough to handle, with gloved hands, peel and de-seed peppers. Dice Peppers and set aside.

After Broiling, Turn your oven to 425 degrees.

½ cup Masa Harina

¾ cups Whole MIlk

Mix Masa Harina into milk and set aside.

¼ cup Vegetable Oil

1 cup Onion, Diced

1 lb ground Pork or Beef

½ jar Frontera Ancho Adobo

1- 28 oz can Fire Roasted Diced Tomato (puree ½ of the can in the blender – leave the other half diced)

2 tsp ground Cumin

2 tsp Salt

½ – 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper

½ tsp paprika

2 tsp Sugar

½ cup Cilantro, chopped

2 cups Shredded Monterey Jack cheese

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until fragrant. Add ground meat, sautéing to break up lumps until meat is cooked through. Add Adobo, and sauté until meat is coated with sauce. Add remaining ingredients, as well as chopped poblanos and cook on low for 10 minutes.

Pour meat mixture into an 8×11 baking dish and top with 2 cups of shredded cheese.

2 egg whites

1 tsp salt

½ tsp Cracked Black Pepper

In a stand mixer with a whip attachment or with a hand mixer, beat egg whites until stiff peaks. Gently fold Masa mixture, salt and pepper into egg whites.

I’m ashamed, sometimes, to admit the truth of my personal history with the enchilada. There are two chapters in that story, neither is particularly impressive for culinary authenticity, and I’m not sure which came first: One chapter is set in a Taco Bell; the other, in Velveeta.

If you’re an eater of a certain age who dabbled in fast food in the errant days of youth, you may recall an entrée called the Enchirito. I remember it because I ate it. A lot. Served in an oval cardboard bowl, it was a corn tortilla folded around beans, ground beef, a sprinkle of onion, then smothered in red sauce, and capped with dollop of sour cream and a sliced black olive. And it was heaven. I’m not sure what it was about this particular assemblage that set my little taste buds a-tingle, but I craved it. And it was a treat, too, because this was back in the day when Taco Bell was a pricey proposition – long before the dollar menu was a twinkle in some CEO’s eye.

The second chapter happened at home when Mom and Aunt Ellner discovered large flour tortillas that they could stuff

Pre-rolling

with ground beef and fat slabs of processed cheese. You could roll those babies up early in the day and just leave them to hang out and chill until the extended family finally made it to the party. A quick dollop of sauce and a few minutes in a hot oven, and insto-presto, there was a delicious and exotic feast for everyone. And ooey, gooey sorta cheesy they were – which is to say, delightful, and, therefore, a big hit at family hoedowns.

But my family wasn’t unique in that regard; enchiladas have long been popular in the average American home. In fact, the first printed mention of an enchilada in the states showed up in a church cookbook from the Heartland itself. The “Centennial Buckeye Cookbook” was first published in 1876 by the good ladies of the First Congregational Church of Marysville, Ohio to help raise money for a parsonage.

And that recipe (contributed by the honorable Anson Safford, Governer of Arizona) like Aunt Ellner’s recipe, and Taco Bell’s too, was true to the concept of the enchilada as formulated by the Aztecs. An authentic enchilada isn’t difficult to achieve as the essential element is that there is a tortilla in a chile sauce.

Beautiful to see and to eat

Sadly, Aunt Ellner got the tortilla wrong – authenticity demands corn – but we’ll cut her some slack ‘cause we like her and her cooking, too. Besides, I imagine that you can use whatever tortilla suits you without upsetting anybody – especially after the first bite. And it’s unlikely that the ole Aztecs loaded up their tortilla with bright yellow, melty cheese, but I dunno -I never asked them.

What remains really right and important about the enchilada is that it’s easy to assemble ahead of time, it’s delicious and, if you’re a sharing kind of person, it’s pretty impressive, if simple party fare, too.

That’s especially true of the Tomato Head’s super simple and mighty tasty version. If you’re up early – you can catch Mahasti making the treat live on WBIR’s weekend today – if not well, we’ll put a link right here so you can check whenever you’re ready to cook.

Tomato Head’s Chicken Enchilada

For the Chicken:

1 lb Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast

1/3 cup Oil

½ large Onion, largely diced

8 cups of Water

1 Tbl Salt

To Assemble the Enchiladas:

2 -8 oz packages Frontera Enchilada Sauce

8 – Corn or small Flour Tortillas

½ lb Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese

Sour Cream

Chopped onion

Cilantro

Heat the oil, in a medium pot over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until translucent. Add chicken breast, water and salt. Increase heat to high, when water starts to boil, reduce heat to low and allow chicken to simmer for 20 minutes until done.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove the chicken from the broth; let the chicken cool until it is cool enough to handle. Shred the chicken by pulling it apart. Set aside.

Pour 1/3 of the packet of enchilada sauce into the bottom of an 8 X 11 baking dish. Arrange 3 or 4 corn tortillas on your work surface. Place approximately ¼ – 1/3 cup chicken on each tortilla followed by ¼ cup of shredded cheese. Roll the tortillas up to form cylinders. Place the tortillas seam side down. Repeat the process until all the tortillas have been filled and place in the baking dish.

Pour the remaining sauce over the rolled tortillas, making sure they are covered entirely. Sprinkle any remaining cheese on top of the sauce. Bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes – or until the cheese melts and the sauce is starting to bubble.

Remove the dish from the oven. Serve with Sour Cream, cilantro and chopped onion.

As far as I can tell, there are still people who don’t quite know what to do with a turnip. Turnip greens have a more certain presence for Southern eaters, but the bulbous root itself doesn’t seem to command a great deal of attention. And when it does find its way into the average pot, I’m not sure that it gets treated with much respect. In my own experience, diced turnips sometimes appeared at a covered dish church supper, soggy, unattractive and untouched on a long table –left alone there as diners chose the more attractive company of mashed potatoes, mac-n-cheese, even steamed-to-death broccoli, and iceberg lettuce, limp and drowning in value brand ranch.

Diced and Ready to Go in the Pot

The turnip did get a recent moment in the spotlight with First Lady, Michelle Obama in a six second Vine appearance, which prompted some news outlets, including the LA Times, to offer up a few recipes including a classic one for glazed turnips. But even with Mrs. Obama’s hip turnip moment set to the sounds of DJ Snake and Lil John, there are few kids in our neck of the woods who wake up thinking that they’d love to dive into a steaming bowl of creamed turnips.

Even in literature, the turnip doesn’t get much love. There’s a Russian fairy tale about a giant turnip with a lovely moral about the value of teamwork. And the Brothers Grimm have a giant turnip tale in their collection, too (albeit one with a mighty weird ending), but neither of these tales made it into any of my story books.

But turnips are worth considering. They belong to the same family that includes broccoli,

Simmering Away

cauliflower and kale, usually they’re affordable, they’re always rich in vitamin C, B6, folate and other good things, too. They are great storage vegetables and have been a welcome part of the winter diet when good food planning (and planting) meant the difference in life and death on the Tundra.

The root can be woody, sharp and bitter if it’s grown in too warm a climate or gets too big, but smaller bulbs are sweet, earthy, and reminiscent of radish. They make a nice addition to mashed potatoes or a mixed vegetable roast, and are a classic combination with braised duck.

Peel and dice onion and garlic. Remove ends from turnips – peel, then dice turnips. Cut the stalks off the fennel bulb right above the bulb, where the bulb starts to turn green, rinse and slice the stalks.

Heat oil in a medium to large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté for 2-3 minute until onions are translucent. Add fennel stalks and fronds, turnips, and water. Increase heat to high; bring mixture to boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer soup uncovered for 20 – 30 minutes or until turnips are easily pierced with a fork. Remove from heat and add salt, pepper, and lemon juice. With an immersion blender, blend soup until smooth. Serve immediately or cool and reheat when needed.

If using a traditional stand blender – allow soup to cool before blending. Hot liquids will splatter, with the potential to burn when blended.

It’s about that time, you know, when the Great Pumpkin descends and showers candy and other goodies upon cute little ghouls, goblins, superheroes, a handful of witches and miniaturized versions of the walking dead. And there are larger folks, sometimes also dressed in strange attire roaming about, too, herding the little bands of the costumed from treat to treat. A few of these Halloween shepherds are happy to snag whatever funky candy that the kids won’t eat, and yet, sad but true, some of us aged ghouls are a little too sweet already.

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to make a diet of Skittles and chocolate bars, but most colorfully wrapped candy leaves much to be desired for my appetite. Of course, if you’ve got a fat cupcake or hefty wedge of peanut butter pie, that works, but, truth be told, the older I get, the more I crave the warm and savory when little spirits are indulging in a sugar rush.

So, when Mahasti was planning her visit to WBIR this morning, I was thrilled that we would be learning about a savory seasonal something that’s super suitable for sharing with big hobgoblins who might knock on your door looking for a less sugary Halloween treat: Pumpkin Soup.

For those of you who have reached your Pumpkin Spice threshold for the year, please don’t give up on us yet – this pumpkin spice will re-fire your engines and heat your endorphins into full steam. Tomato Head’s Roasted Pumpkin and Poblano Pepper Soup features a heart and head warming blend of spices with a calming and comforting dollop of heavy cream to create a treat that will revive and refresh even the most dead-on-her-feet zombie.

Mahasti’s recipe includes both Poblano and habanero pepper along with a touch of ginger. Poblanos, of course, are only mildly spicy but have a rich and warming, almost earthy flavor that’s a fantastic match to pumpkin’s also slightly earthy but buttery and mildly sweet flavor. Habanero lends some heat but, better yet, it contributes a bright personality that, with the ginger, gives an extra tingle to each mouthful of this potage.

It’s a creamy comfort that gets a fun crunch from the addition of toasted pumpkin seeds, which, IMHO, is one of the great under-sung heroes in the pantheon of snacks.

What’s particularly nice about most creamy pumpkin soup is that it’s great warm, at room temperature and cool, too – so despite the warm Halloween that we’re expecting, this soup can easily match your mood and the forecast, too. And because it’s pureed to a silky smooth texture, it’s easy to serve a dollop in a cup for a quick snack or an on the go goody for shepherds of the fast moving and ambitious trick or treaters – after all, Halloween comes but once a year and when the Great Pumpkin finally arrives – best grab it while the getting’s good.

You can see how easy this recipe is to put together by checking out Mahasti’s appearance on WBIR’s Weekend Today at this link: http://www.wbir.com/life/food/soups/tomato-head-pumpkin-and-poblano-soup/344125793

Tomato Head’s Roasted Pumpkin and Poblano Pepper Soup

¼ cup oil

1 cup onion, diced

1 inch piece of ginger, peeled, chopped

¼ Habanero pepper

1 medium size Poblano pepper, roasted, seeded and peeled

2 cups Roasted Pumpkin

1/3 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

1 tsp salt

2.5 cups water

1 cup heavy cream

In a medium pot, over medium heat, sauté the onion in oil until translucent. Add ginger, habanero, peeled poblano, roasted pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, salt, and water. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for 10- 15 minutes until ginger is soft. Puree the soup with an immersion blender **. Add the heavy cream and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve topped with toasted pumpkin seeds.

4-6 people

** Do not blend hot soup in a traditional blender; allow soup to cool and then puree the mixture. Return the mixture to the pot and bring to a boil, then add heavy cream and simmer for 5 – 10 minutes longer.

Despite my inclination to poke a little fun at the growing pumpkin spice craze, it’s actually one of the coolest food and beverage trends to come along in a great while. In fact, anything we do to give pumpkin a lift is really a kind of All-American celebration, because the great orange squash is one of those great All-American foodstuffs that predates Amerigo Vespucci (America’s namesake) by about 5000 years.

When I was knee-high to a gourd, we read about Native agriculture in the form of the 3-Sisters, corns, beans, and squash, which were cultivated together because of their symbiotic relationship: corn gives the beans a natural pole to grow on; squash has wide foliage that help product corn’s shallow root system; and beans add nitrogen to the soil which helps everybody grow.

Squash, and pumpkin in particular, have deep roots in this continent – in fact, it may have surfaced right here, close to home, in the land that provides us with a lot of culinary inspiration: Mexico.

Archeologists opine that the Oaxaca Highlands (which, roughly speaking, is on the Pacific side of Mexico opposite Veracruz) were among the first places where pumpkin was cultivated – some 7500 years ago. The squash was grown for food, of course, but also for medicine, for storage (you can make nifty bowls from pumpkin hulls!), perhaps even for use of its fibrous strands for making mats. Of course we still prefer eating pumpkin to any other use – though Jack-O-Lanterns are awfully nifty, too.

Recently, as you all know, folk have also taken a lot of interest in drinking pumpkin – or at least the flavor of pumpkin or just the spices that often go with it (we vociferated about that in a previous blog post). Despite the quibbles we’ve already expressed about the craze, we remain committed to the idea of giving pumpkin its due. And since we owe this wonderful cucurbit to our friends to the south, this week Mahasti showed us all how to celebrate both pumpkin itself and its ancient home all at the same time.

Mexico, of course, is the font of innumerable good things to eat and drink, but when autumn hits the air, we’re pretty sure that champurrado is the best thing from our neighbor since corn tortillas.

Champurrado is a thick, rich drink, originally made with chocolate – it’s like hot chocolate, but thicker, richer and much more fortifying. It’s almost breakfast itself because it starts with masa harina – dried corn meal – that’s cooked with a little water and combined with chocolate.

The flavor and texture of this drink are luxurious, and, fair warning, may make your favorite latte seem a little wimpy in comparison. And it’s very easy to make at home – plus, if you’ve never roasted a pumpkin in your own kitchen, this is the perfect chance to get some practice in for pie making season and add a great fall drink to your repertoire, too. You may even throw in a little food history and heritage to your smaller helpers.

We have the recipe here below, but you can watch it happen the way Mahasti does it (with a couple fun tips, too) on WBIR by following this link:

Cut pumpkin in half, remove seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with 1 inch of water. Bake oven in a 400 degree oven for approximately 20 minutes or until you can insert a fork into the pumpkin easily. Remove from oven, flip the pumpkins over. When the pumpkins are cool, scoop out the flesh and discard the skin. Store extra pumpkin your refrigerator for another use.

In a medium sauce pan whisk together the Masa Harina with cold water and pinch of salt. Heat the mixture over medium heat stirring occasionally for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a blender, blend the fresh pumpkin with the milk. Add the milk mixture and the remaining ingredients to the pot, whisking constantly until milk heats up and mixture thickens and foams a little.

The passing of summer always makes me sad – not for the end of sultry days and blinding sun, of course, but for the end of market days and backyard harvests, of warm tomatoes and sweet corn. Even so, I am made equally happy for the first sweet smell of autumn when I find it in the air of some cool September morn carting the promise of cooler days and warm cider. But September is a teasing month, and those wafts of fall give way to still sultry, sunny afternoons that surprise me like a sudden slap.

It’s the contrast of these transitional days that make me think of Pablo Neruda.

If you don’t know Neruda’s poetry, it’s worth a trip to the library, particularly if you’re a food lover. Neruda, a Chilean poet and the winner of the Nobel Prize in 1971, wrote a wide variety of verse including some fabulous odes to food. My college roommate introduced me to the haunting Ode to Salt and, my favorite of all, the joyous Ode to Watermelon:

the throat
becomes thirsty,
the teeth,
the lips, the tongue:
we want to drink
waterfalls,
the dark blue night,
the South Pole,
and then
the coolest of all
the planets crosses
the sky,
the round, magnificent,
star-filled watermelon.

It’s the promise of autumnal breezes juxtaposed with the last cruel rays of sun that make me thirsty above all things and bring to mind my favorite line of the ode, “we want to drink/ waterfalls”. And so I go in search of the melon, clinging to the sweet spot of the sunny season even as I grasp the joys of transition to the days of football fields and the first taste of fall flavors.

It’s an awfully romantic way to describe a food obsession, I grant you, but that’s just how I roll.

But that transition, particularly in terms of flavors isn’t always jarring – in fact, it’s harmonious in our kitchen. That’s because when our thoughts run to tailgating we find that watermelon sneaks into many of our considerations of game-day nosh. And one of the best ways to assuage all the feels that fill our hungry heart is to incorporate melon into dishes. It keeps the flavor in our minds and mouths and makes for some pretty clever eating, too.

Ready to Eat

Consider the case of Watermelon Salsa. At first, you’re thinking of the spice and heat and how odd that might seem with our beloved sweet fruit, or perhaps you know about the secret and sacred flavor connection between tomato and watermelon – if you do, you know that this salsa makes perfect sense. The tomato at its finest is also a sweet treat, full of the same waterfalls that our friend Pablo imagined. So it’s never hard for us to imagine a dish of salsa with watermelon in it – somedays, it’s hard to imagine salsa without it.

For any doubter’s out there, we’ll show you how it works right on your own TV – if you’ll tune in to WBIR’s Weekend Today, on Saturday morning, Mahasti will be making Watermelon Salsa just in time for when football time in Tennessee really heats up.

Try it, you’ll like it – even more so if you’re reading aloud a bit of poetry – like you do before college football games, right? Or perhaps not – but you’ll be feeling it – maybe even just a bit like this….

Jewel box of water, phlegmatic
queen
of the fruitshops,
warehouse
of profundity, moon
on earth!
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we
want
to bite into you,
to bury our
face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!

Thanks, Pablo – we feel you!

The ingredients coming together

Tomato Head’s Watermelon Salsa

8 cups watermelon, diced

1/3 cup cilantro, chopped

1/2 cup onion, diced

1 large jalapeno, diced about 2 Tbls

1 tsp salt

2 Tbl fresh lime juice

Cut Watermelon in half, then cut into 1 inch segments. Lay each segment on cutting board and carve out the flesh. Cut the watermelon into ¼ inch cubes and place in a medium mixing bowl. Add chopped cilantro, diced onion and jalapeno along with salt and lime juice. Mix everything together with a large spoon until all the ingredients are distributed evenly.

Serve as a dip with Tortilla chips. Also makes a great salsa for topping your favorite fish tacos or black bean nachos.

Unlike hummus, baklava or even falafel, fattoush is a word that hasn’t quite made it into the common food vocabulary. Like the other foods mentioned, fattoush is an important dish in the cuisine of Levant – a broad and imprecise area that includes much of the eastern Mediterranean. The word Levant doesn’t get used so much anymore in English – apparently the French still like it, though I didn’t actually ask them – and, according to an article on PRI.org, “It literally means “the rising,” referring to the land where the sun rises. If you’re in France, in the western Mediterranean, that would make sense as a way to describe the eastern Mediterranean.”

And all of that makes perfect sense if you’ve ever eaten fattoush; it’s a simple, summery feast of color, flavor and texture that brings a lot of the rising sun into each bite.

Fattoush is part of a larger group of dishes, like panzanella, that are basically bread salads, all born of frugal food sense and a no-waste kitchen economy. These dishes stretch the dough, literally and figuratively, to make stale bread not only useful but delicious. The secret starts in the toasting, of course, but what happens after is the real magic – the kind that comes from sunshine.

Good fattoush is simple and combines crispy pita, olive oil, tomatoes, and cucumber. There are other ways to dress up the salad, but those four essentials are what make or break the dish. The key is freshness – not only of the produce but of the composition itself. Sure the pita can be stale, but it must be freshly toasted – and the whole salad has to be tossed together just before serving so the bread doesn’t turn to mush.

When it’s made correctly, it’s a dish that you can eat like nachos – picking up pieces of pita piled high with summer veg and dripping with olive oil. The combination of cool, crisp cucumbers, and tomatoes ripe from the vine slick with the sun-packed flavor of oil makes for a textural match made in food heaven when joined in a single bite with the crunch of toasted pita.

It’s a remarkable dish that’s straightforward, pantry friendly, and simple but all the more elegant because of that. It’s a feast for the eyes too: the colors are bright and shiny with oil and reflect the best rays of the summer sun.

If your appetite is activated now, just wait until Saturday when you tune in to WBIR’s Weekend Today. Mahasti is back on the air after a brief sabbatical, and she’ll show us all her secrets for one of her favorite warm weather meals. We hope you’ll tune in, and shortly thereafter, chow down!